Minding Your "ings": Sentence Fragments

I recently went over sentence fragments—what they are and why they are a problem. As I was reading a manuscript this weekend, however, I suddenly realize that I neglected to mention the type of sentence fragment that is probably the most common: the “-ing”-verb sentence fragment.

Now, the -ing verb (or present participle) is a subject that I’ve covered a few times before. It’s a form of verb that is usually used to indicate that one action is being performed simultaneously to another action. For example:

     Gasping for breath, Amy slowed to a stop.

The above sentence indicates that two actions are occurring at the same time—Amy was gasping while she slowed to a stop.

Note that only one of the verbs in that sentence (gasping) is an -ing verb. The second verb (slowed) is a simple past-tense verb paired with the subject of the sentence, Amy. That’s because an -ing verb cannot serve as the primary verb of a sentence.

Remember: the most common use of the -ing verb is to indicate simultaneous actions—it can’t be used without another verb in the sentence that is conjugated to pair up with a subject, as in our example above. When writers attempt to use an -ing verb as the primary verb of the sentence, they end up with sentence fragments like this:

     Driving to the store.

This example has no subject! Who is driving to the store?

Pictured: The scene created by the sentence fragment "Driving to the store."

     His head pounding.

This example has a noun that could function as a subject, if it weren’t paired with an -ing verb.

     Gasping for breath, her lungs burning and her legs aching.

Again, this example has nouns (lungs and legs), but it has no verbs that aren’t in -ing format, so it is still a sentence fragment.

Now, you might look through your manuscript and find a sentence like this:

     Amy was running in the park.

That sentence doesn’t follow the same format as our good example above, does it? But it’s an -ing verb, and it’s grammatically sound. But note that there is a second verb in that sentence, one that is conjugated to work properly with the subject: was. That’s why this sentence works where the others didn’t.

(You might also note that there is no simultaneous action in that sentence. Take a moment, though, to think about how that sentence would be used. It would probably be part of an introduction to a scene, don’t you think? “Amy was running in the park. A dog approached her with a human hand in its mouth.” The simultaneous action is still there—it will just be in a different sentence.)

As I said before, this is probably the most common type of sentence fragment that I run across in manuscripts. So keep an eye on any sentences you have that feature an -ing verb, and make sure that they also have a proper subject and verb. Even then, though, there’s a lot of ways that -ing verbs can go wrong. To make sure everything is in order, go back through the rest of the “Minding Your ‘-ings’” series to make sure that your -ings are all square: here’s the links to Part One, Part Two, and Part Three.

Punctuation Problems: Hyphens and Compound Modifiers

One of the most common uses for the hyphen (-) is to connect compound modifiers. A compound modifier is a mix of two or more adjectives or adverbs that jointly modify the same word. So, for example:

     He is such a well-behaved boy.

The words well and behaved work in tandem to modify boy. Well clarifies the meaning of behaved, and together they carry a new descriptive meaning. They are acting together as though they were a single adjective. Here are some other examples:

     “You think she committed the murder? She’s a ninety-seven-year-old woman, for heaven’s sake!”

     “My hospital takes a very patient-centered approach to healthcare.”

     “The creature had a 50-foot wingspan!”

Note that in compound modifiers that involve numbers, a hyphen is required whether you spell out the number or use numerals (so the last example could also be fifty-foot; but a hyphen is needed either way).

Part of the reason for this rule is to avoid potentially confusing situations. For example:

     “We met an American football player in the pub last night.”

Did the speakers meet someone who plays American football, or did they meet a football player who is also American? A hyphen can add clarification:

     “We met an American-football player in the pub last night.”

The hyphen lets us know that those two descriptors belong together; thus, the answer is that the speakers met someone who plays American football.

"Man eating plant" vs. "Man-eating plant."

Remember that you only hyphenate words that are working together as a single adjective. So the following usage would be incorrect:

     “This might be the most well-thought-out-and-over-detailed plan I’ve ever seen.”

Well-thought-out and over-detailed are two separate descriptions, so the example should instead read:

     “This might be the most well-thought-out and over-detailed plan I’ve ever seen.”

Exceptions:

Sadly, it can’t just be that simple. There are a few exceptions to the hyphenating-compound-modifiers rule.

First exception: If the first word in the compound modifier is an adverb that ends in -ly, it is extremely unusual to hyphenate the two words together.

     He is such a poorly behaved boy.

     Part of the reason for this rule is to avoid potentially confusing situations.

Second exception: This rule only applies to compound modifiers that appear before the word they modify. If they appear after, they should not be hyphenated. Here’s what some of our earlier examples would look like if the compound modifiers had appeared after the word they modified:

     “That boy is so well behaved.”

     “You think she committed the murder? That woman is ninety seven years old, for heaven’s sake!”

     “My hospital’s approach to healthcare is very patient centered.”

     “The creature had a wingspan of 50 feet!”

On Dealing With Rejection

Perhaps the hardest aspect of pursuing a career as an author is dealing with rejection. Any writer who desires to be professionally published will have to deal with editors or agents continually turning down their work. Even successful authors are not immune to this problem; while they generally deal with less rejection from editors and agents, they make up for it with inevitable negative reviews, harsh critics, and vitriol from fans and non-fans alike.

How you deal with rejection and criticism once you're famous and successful is up to you. Some authors prefer to ignore it and focus on their successes. Others prefer to confront their critics. Your methods of dealing with such problems should depend on what makes you feel better, on how you wish to be perceived by the public, and on how you handle conflict.

But dealing with rejection before you're famous and successful is another matter entirely. At this stage in your career, most of the rejection you face will come from editors or agents. Some of them will not be gentle; some of them might be outright rude or harsh. Even gentle rejections or criticisms can be difficult to handle, especially when you have to face them over and over and over. In those situations, the most important thing for you to do is calm down and don't lash out.

Don't respond angrily to the editor (or agent)

Remember my post about being humble in your cover letter? Everything I said there applies to all interactions with editors and agents. When I first began working at a literary magazine, I was astounded at how many writers would respond angrily, defensively, or condescendingly when they received a rejection or critique from us. These weren't simply passing comments in the cover letter of the next story they sent us; they went out of their way to compose a reply and mail it to us. Don't be that person. It won't do you any good.

Don't try to correct the editor

Similarly, writing to editors to inform them that their comments on your story were incorrect is useless. You're not going to convince an editor that your story was actually better than they originally thought. You'll only make yourself look arrogant and unaware. It might hurt to be rejected, but lashing out at the editor will only hurt your chances of being published in the future.

You might think, "Well, I just won't submit to that editor or agent again." But editors move around a lot. They work on side projects, they move to new companies. I have, on more than one occasion, had stories pitched to me by authors who didn't realize that I was the same person that they'd once arrogantly chewed out for rejecting a story. Publishing is a smaller world than most people think.

Don't badmouth the editor

Venting is a useful method of dealing with disappointment and the hurt of rejection. If you're upset with an editor or agent that rejected you, feel free to complain to some close friends, to your spouse, to your siblings, or to your parents. Find a sympathetic shoulder. Do not, however, badmouth the editor or agent to other editors, to other agents, or to other writers. Like I said, publishing is a smaller world than you might expect—odds are pretty good that the professional that you're complaining to will know the person that you're badmouthing. They might be friends. Either way, you won't make yourself look good by criticizing someone with more experience and clout in the industry—you'll just look arrogant and petty.

And this should go without saying—don't badmouth the editor or agent on Twitter, Facebook, or other social media. The internet is a public forum; don't post anything anywhere that you don't want the whole world to see.

The road to publication is difficult enough as it is; if you allow rejection to make you angry or bitter, if you lash out at the people who could potentially publish you, you'll just make your road that much more rocky, steep, and difficult.

Commas and Introductory Phrases

     Because he hated it when people came to his door Hermit Jones moved to an isolated cave in the mountains.

There is something missing from that sentence, and that something is a comma. It belongs between the introductory phrase and the rest of the sentence:

     Because he hated it when people came to his door, Hermit Jones moved to an isolated cave in the mountains.

How can you tell when a phrase is an “introductory phrase” rather than a normal beginning to a sentence? Well, first you need to know your basic sentence structure:

     SUBJECT      VERB     (sometimes optional) DIRECT OBJECT

        Callie           loves             those soft orange candy peanuts.

Most sentences begin with the subject of the sentence (and any adjectives used to describe them). If there is a complete phrase before the subject of the sentence, it is usually an introductory phrase that will need to be set apart by a comma. Introductory phrases usually describe the location, time, conditions, or reasons for the action taken by the sentence’s subject. So in our example above, Hermit Jones is the subject and moved is the verb. Everything before Hermit Jones is an introductory phrase describing his reason for moving, so it requires a comma to set it apart from the rest of the sentence.

Here’s some other examples:

      Before I get into the story, I should warn you that it is rather disturbing.

     Afraid of exposing herself to mockery, Dorothy decided not to try out for the cheerleading squad.

     To be perfectly honest, I don’t really understand the appeal of snowboarding.

     Lately, Georgina has seemed rather distressed and distant.

Now most of these examples have introductory phrases of several words, but take note of that last one. An introductory phrase can be as short as a single word. With such short introductory phrases, it isn’t uncommon to forgo a comma—I did it with “now” at the beginning of this paragraph, for example.

     Lately Georgina has seemed rather distressed and distant.

If you’re not sure whether or not it’s acceptable to leave out the comma between your short introductory phrase and the rest of the sentence, err on the side of caution and put the comma in.

The question of whether or not to include the introductory-phrase-comma is like the question of whether or not to bring food to a party: you might be okay if you don't, but you'll always be okay if you do.

Calm Down About "Whom"

I’ve gone over what makes a sentence quite a few times lately (subject + verb + direct object if needed), so now seems a good time to go over who and whom, since those two words are closely related to sentence structure.

The question of when to use who or whom is one of the most common grammatical questions in the English-speaking portion of the world. 

(Toby was right, naturally.)

The explanation is actually pretty simple: use who when the word is the subject of the sentence (or an embedded clause—more on that in a moment) and use whom when it isn’t the subject.

     Who      bought    these cookies?

   Subject     Verb      Direct Object

        To whom              should          I           give       the cookie?

   Indirect Object         Verbal      Subject     Verb         Direct

(i.e. not the subject)   Auxiliary                                    Object

An embedded clause is basically a sentence within a sentence—it has its own subject and verb:

     We       need to find out         who bought these cookies.

   Subject         Verbs             Embedded clause with who as its subject

I could go on for much longer about how to properly use who and whom, but I’m not going to; Matthew Inman has already done a great (and much more entertaining) breakdown of that over at The Oatmeal. What I would like to delve into is why—why whom is so tricky, and why you should (or shouldn’t) use it.

Why Whom Is Tricky

(This section is pretty in-depth, so if you’re just interested in advice on using whom, skip to the next section)

There are quite a few pronouns that have both a subjective form and an objective form. For example:

I and me, she and her—we’re all used to these pronoun pairs, right? We don’t have to stop and think for a moment to figure out whether to say they or them. So why are who and whom difficult to keep straight?

Part of the answer is that who is different from the other pronouns shown in that chart. I, you, he, she, and they are all personal pronouns. Who, on the other hand, is what we call an interrogative pronoun—a pronoun that asks which person or thing is meant. Let’s look at who and whom on a chart with other interrogative pronouns:

Notice how who stands out? It’s literally the only interrogative pronoun in the English language that changes depending on how it is used. No wonder it’s so hard to use, when every similar word works in a completely different (and far simpler) manner!

So why is who different from all the other interrogative pronouns? Well, language is constantly evolving—new uses for words develop while old ones fall away and disappear. All those other interrogative pronouns probably used to have objective forms that fell out of use long before the language began to form into what it is today. The same thing happened to you. Take a look at that first chart up above—notice how you is the only personal pronoun on the chart that doesn’t have a distinct objective form. But that wasn’t always the case.

There was a time when you not only had an objective form, but also had a separate singular form that declined into its own objective. So our chart above would once have looked something like this:

Over time, thou, thee, and ye all fell out of use; these days, we use you in all of the instances where we would once have used those other words. Imagine if English teachers around the world suddenly began to demand that we all resume using thou, thee, and ye. It wouldn’t go well—it would be confusing and irritating if people tried to force us to use words that don’t improve or enhance our ability to communicate. But, for some stubborn reason, that’s exactly what people do with whom. We don’t need the word; it doesn’t improve the language. But people just won’t let it go.

Why You Should Use Whom and Why You Shouldn’t

Whom is on its way out—give us another century, tops, and it won’t really be part of the language anymore. It’ll be an abandoned, archaic word like thou or whence; a word we all know used to be part of the language, something we can find in older books, but not a word that even the most demanding college professors demand we use. And good riddance to it.

Most of the time, my advice to new writers is to pay attention to all of the rules of grammar—don’t risk looking inept because you don’t care about comma splices or the difference between amused and humored. Whom, on the other hand, is one of the rare bits of grammar that I feel beginning writers can safely ignore. In fact, you'll look worse if you use whom incorrectly than you will if you don't use it at all!

Generally, whom is not a word you should bother with unless you have a specific purpose in mind. If you are striving for an intellectual and formal tone to your story, than go ahead and whom it up. If you have an educated or pedantic character, you can pepper their language with whoms. But if you want your dialog or your prose to feel more relaxed and natural, then get rid of the word. It’s not something that most editors will be bothered by—if they really feel that you need to use whom, then they’ll tell you; but they won’t reject your manuscript because of it.

Identifying Sentence Fragments

I was browsing through my old posts this morning and was surprised to find that I haven’t written about sentence fragments before. So let’s dive back into the basics of what makes up a sentence: a subject, a verb, and (often) a direct object.

     Mary-Anne    devoured    her sandwich.

        Subject           Verb        Direct Object

The subject of the sentence is the thing that is performing an action. The verb is the action that is being performed. The direct object is the thing that is being acted upon—the thing that the verb is affecting. Not all verbs require a direct object.

     Nathaniel    ran.

       Subject     Verb      (no direct object needed)

No matter how much additional information you add, the heart of your sentence will always be a subject, a verb, and a potential direct object.

     Every morning before work, Mary-Anne jogged around the park.

                Additional Info               Subject     Verb        Add. Info 

     Nathaniel loves peanuts on his ice cream sundaes.

       Subject   Verb   D.O.            Add. Info

If a sentence does not have that central subject and verb, then it isn’t a sentence—it’s a sentence fragment.

The subject and verb of a sentence are like the bread in a sandwich; take them away, and you no longer have a sandwich, you have a salad. Or worse, a KFC Double Down.

     Mary-Anne looked around the dusty old room. Light from the window fell upon an open jewelry box sitting on the shelf, full of tarnished old jewelry. Dirty emerald bracelets and ragged pearl necklaces.

The first sentence of that example has both a subject and a verb: Mary-Anne and looked, respectively. The second sentence has them as well: Light and fell. The third sentence, however, is a fragment—it has nouns that could serve as subjects, but it has no verb.

The problem with sentence fragments is they technically have no meaning—they can impart scant amounts of information, but they don’t tell readers what to do with it. Imagine helping a friend clean their house; you arrive, they hand you a bucket of paint and a brush, and then they walk off without explaining what they wanted you to do with the paint. Do you paint the room you’re in? Another room? The exterior of the house? Did they just want you to put the can of paint away?

Sentence fragments create a similar sense of confusion on a smaller scale. They can throw your readers out of the story, which is rarely desirable.

Now, sentence fragments aren’t always bad. Think about the way you think—it’s not always in complete sentences, is it? Sentence fragments can be a useful method for mimicking the way people think and perceive the world. For instance:

     I sniffed the air, trying to identify the familiar scent. Pickles? Why did my office smell like pickles?

In that example, Pickles? is a sentence fragment. Since it mimics the way humans think, it is easy and natural to follow the author’s intended meaning. This is a useful fragment.

In the future we may delve more deeply into sentence fragments and what makes them work or not work. For now, my advice is to avoid them. They can be occasionally useful, but their detriments tend to outweigh their usefulness unless you really know what you’re doing. More often than not, you’re better off using full sentences.

Narrative Gaps

What’s missing from the following passage?

     “Have you heard from Gil?” Miranda asked as she lit her cigarette.

     “No,” Nikolai replied, frowning at the smoke. “But he’s usually bad about checking in.” It was unusual to hear from Gil more often than once a week.

     “But you’re worried anyway, aren’t you?” Miranda blew some more smoke in Nikolai’s face and then smiled.

The hint to what is missing is those words “some more.” We’re told that Miranda blew some more smoke into Nikolai’s face, which implies that she’d done that once already. But that first time wasn’t shown—she lit the cigarette, Nikolai was bothered by the smoke, and then she was already blowing the smoke a second time.

This is similar to the perspective error mentioned here, but it’s a more general, widespread problem. The problem with these little gaps in the narrative is that they knock the reader out of the story. You don’t want your readers pausing to look through what they’ve read, thinking that perhaps they missed something earlier. Confusion is the enemy of immersive reading.

These sorts of small gaps in a scene are usually the result of a series of edits—relics of earlier drafts.

Cleaning up little narrative gaps after numerous drafts and re-writes is a little like trying to keep your house clean while children are living in it; there's always a new problem to fix.

Perhaps the author deleted the section of dialog wherein Miranda first blew smoke in Nikolai’s face without remembering to alter the later line of text. Maybe the author mistakenly thought she had already had Miranda blow some smoke and added the above instance without double-checking.

Unfortunately, since these errors tend to come about because authors are overwhelmed with trying to keep track of dozens to hundreds of edits at once, the task of catching them without aid is next to impossible. That’s where alpha and beta readers come in—find some friends who are attentive and thoughtful readers and ask them to go through your story and highlight any discrepancies you find. Once you’ve fixed the errors they found, ask a completely different group of readers to go over the story.

P.S. 

Another useful method is to search through your manuscript for terms such as again, once more, or some more—any terms that could indicate repetition. Make sure, if you've got someone performing an action a second time, that they actually performed it the first time.